Indirect Questions in ‘Early Latin’

The chapter investigates the factors motivating the choice of mood in Early Latin indirect questions. Under what conditions would the speaker use the indicative rather than the subjunctive? subjunctive? Some factors have already been identified, such as exclamatory-style phrases, the degree of detachment of the indirect question, the head verb’s meaning and its mood. The present study submits that variation in mood can be motivated by (literary) register and the social identity of speaker and addressee. The question is addressed first by building a complete corpus of indirect questions in Early Latin drama, with each form tagged with the relevant markers (metrical context, status of speaker and addressee, etc.); from this corpus of data, instances in which indicative is most definitely retained as a rule are excluded, and instances are examined in which either mood was in principle allowable, with a view to identifying patterns. Attention is paid to style, metre, character type, and genre. This methodology enables a sociolinguistic approach to the question and considerations about the developments in usage over time.